You can also lower the bridge with the strings on the guitar by loosening the strings. I have the same guitar, and set it up pretty well by just lowering the strings, and adjusting the pickup height. I didn't mess with the intonation, as it was correct. The bridge is compensated and it's pretty accurate. Good video.
First visit to your channel and I am subscribing. Enjoyed this show, you gave some good tips and advice. I love Epis, have several and my latest is also an LP Special P90 which is great but needed a little setup attention to be just right for me. Let me save you some time and effort checking and adjusting intonation. As long as you stay in the general neighborhood of correct open pitch as you make and test your adjustments, there's no real need to retune the open strings back to pitch every time. All you're interested in is does the string produce the same pitch at the 12th fret when fretted vs. when you ring the harmonic. The string behaves the same way at the halfway length (a nodal point for vibration) whether it's tuned spot-on to E or whatever. All that matters is that the frequency of the fretted note matches the harmonic as close as you can get, whether you have it tuned perfectly to pitch or not from the nut. In other words the string does not care if you're at E, E flat or whatever. All you want is for it to give you a matching harmonic at the halfway point. Ditch your tuner for this and use your ear. Now check across the neck to the high E, get it all where you're happy, and when you are, THEN go back and retune the guitar using your tuner. Notice too that these pitch relationships will probably change for different guage string sets. I play Ernie Ball and have found their Hybrid Slinky 9-46 set gives almost perfect intonation across the neck on Gibson/Epiphone one-piece 'wrap-tail' bridges. I've also tried the Joe Bonamassa 'top-wrapping' trick on my LP guitars with 2-piece stop-tail/tune-o-matic bridges and I like what that does for general playability. Give it a try, it's something fun to mess with and you may like it. If you don't, no harm done. Thanks brother, glad to find your channel!
Excellent instructional video for a guy like me who has little knowledge but just gained a lot. I feel a lot more confident in working on my own guitars. I also ordered the gauges you used off Amazon. 👍🏼
Great video. I recently got the same guitar and surprisingly the setup was damn near perfect out of the box. I just conditioned the fretboard, lowered the bridge a tiny bit out of preference and it was good to go. I own several Gibsons and this Epiphone definitely holds its own.
Great Video! I'm looking forward to getting my new lefty Epiphone les paul custom with the 2 p90s in tv-yellow. It's on back order all around the world the way it looks. I think even the right handed is now on backorder. i'm looking around and checking out youtube to see if any one has a lefty in the USA, but up to now I see no leftys in the us. Thanks again for the great content. Wishing you the best!
Kevin, THAT is a good idea. I've been using a tape-protected screwdriver and thought I was being a smart guy. Now that I look closer, those slots are scooped with a radius instead of milled straight across the stud, and obviously were designed to fit a coin. A copper-covered zinc penny is softer than nickel-covered steel and even a broke-ass guitar player probably has a penny. I just checked this on all my Gibson-type tailpieces and you are absolutely right! An old dog just learned a new trick.
Thanks man! Thanks to you, my intonation is set on my SG, now to check out my LP standard which also just needs some intonation tweaks. My LP special is all kinds of messed up, I will be following this video closely to fix it.
Good video Kyle! The initial action on the guitar was horrendous. There's no way that was checked at the factory and I don't think I've ever seen a new guitar with such a dirty fretboard. Looks great after you got through the cleaning and polishing process.
On that bridge....you can't intonate individual strings. The bridge is automatically compensated. So just set the low side then the high side and all the other strings are automatically dialed in.
HELLO, i'm a rookie when it comes to playing guitar, i have a guitar similar to that one, but i was changing strings and now i can't find the intonation, e goes great, but when i try E it sounds like a D in the 12frt, by any chance you know how to fix that?
Taping the fretboard is such a faff. I have a small, thin metal plate with a slot cut into it which you lay over the fret. Much quicker and you can get them pretty cheap on eBay.
Are you using a snark tuner for intonation? I find that while those tuners are convenient to get your guitar in tune fairly quickly, they aren't super accurate. I use an old Boss analog tuner (with the needle) which I plug into the guitar for the most accuracy. .
holy crap sounds sooooo much better than you.... will have to get a string ruler though, hard to do with a regular ruler very hard to read... lol thank you so much!
Doesn't backing the screw out or in for the A string effect the adjustment you just did on the E string ? Seems to me doing 1 string will throw off the next one. ..
You're right, it will affect all the adjacent strings. I'm actually getting a Les Paul Special and that's one of my concerns. The intonation can only be so accurate on those wraparound tailpieces.
Thank you for this, it's REALLY helpful...I got one of these guitars about a month ago and so far I'm liking it a lot, but I still don't think I've found the ideal setup for myself...I have a bunch of questions if you don't mind... What is that wrench you used to adjust the intonation screws?...That doesn't come with the guitar, correct?......Where can I get one and what size do I need?...If I don't have one of those is there something else I can use to turn the intonation screws? Did you adjust the height of the pickups?...How close or far away from the strings do you have them set?...Did you mess with the height of the individual screws or just the overall height of the pickups? What gauge strings are you using? Thanks again...I've watched quite a few vids about this guitar and this is by far the most thorough, imo...It's great....
Glad the video was helpful! I used a 1.5mm Allen wrench to adjust the screws for intonation. The guitar came with one taped to the box, but you can pick up a set from most places that carry tools as well as Amazon. I'd recommend getting the set that comes with metric and SAE. Usually, guitars made in the USA use the SAE wrenches and everyone else uses metric (like this guitar). I did not adjust the pickup height. This is my first guitar with P90s, but from what I've read it's not as straight forward as other pickups. This guitar doesn't even have adjustment screws for them. I believe for this guitar, you add or remove foam padding from below the pickup, but I haven't tried it. I usually use Ernie Ball Regular or Super Slinky strings depending on the guitar. I used Regular Slinky (.10- .46) on this one. Hope this helps, and thanks for watching!
@@onemoreguitarchannel Thanks again, really appreciate the response...I found that allen wrench but I had assumed that was for the truss rod (unless it does double duty)...Anyway I got it going and I'm giving it a shot at intonating the guitar myself...This kind of thing is just not my forte so I'll probably just wind up getting it professionally set up once things open back up here...But as long as we're locked down I might as well try it... You can adjust the height of the pickups, I've messed with them already...If you look at the P90s you'll see they both have 2 small phillips head screws sitting in between the flathead pole screws...you can raise or lower the height of the pickups with those...I think you can raise the pole screws too, although I haven't tried that... If you wind up experimenting with those I'd love to hear how much of a difference it made for you...I found I got a much better tone from the neck pickup once I raised it... Thanks again for your videos and your response...Extremely helpful...
I think the myth should be blown wide open epiphones. Even new ones have quality control issues You shouldn’t of had to put the time into it that you did it’s made by Gibson corporation and they should not let guitars go out like that PRSSE are totally playable out of the box I don’t care if it’s 400 or $800 that’s crap at $400 it should be taken out of the box and played with no problem
